Morpheus Lander Crashes and Burns

NASA’s “lean and green” Morpheus lander crashed and burned during a free flight test at Kennedy Space Center today, August 9, at approximately 12:46 pm EDT.

Watch a video of the failed test after the jump:

Designed in-house at Johnson Space Center, the Morpheus lander is engineered to use a liquid oxygen and methane fuel — relatively cheap materials that can be stored easily and would be available resources on other worlds besides Earth.

It is a variant of a quote from Dr. Jerry Pournelle. Speaking of DC/X, Pournelle said, ” It flew
straight up, moved sideways, and landed on a tail of fire just as God and
Robert Heinlein intended rockets to do.”

True Scotti. Of course, there’d be a lot less heartache if only they could cover the test article with landing legs (similar in appearance to a distressed Puffer fish). This way, you could still uncover the untethered failure modes and keep to the test schedule but without risking the Kaa-boom outcome.

I got curious about what Morpheus was all about and found this statement in a ‘Spaceflight Now’ blog’… “It was manufactured and assembled at JSC and Armadillo Aerospace,” the project said on its web page. “Morpheus is large enough to carry 1,100
pounds of cargo to the moon — for example, a humanoid robot, a small
rover, or a small laboratory to convert moon dust into oxygen —
performing all propellant burns after the trans-lunar injection.”

Key words here are humanoid robot, small rover or lab and Morpheus’ ability to perform all propellant burns after TLI. This puppy is/was Nasa’s next lunar lander! Now I’m bummed… [email protected]; P